If you needed to save your documents to a read-only format in Word 2003,you really didn't have many options.If we go to File and Save As in Word 2003, and look at some of the formats,the Save as type dropdown includes things like XML, which is a little more secure.You've also got some HTML options if you are publishing to a web site.As we scroll a little further down, you can see some text options, but nothinglike PDF, the portable document format from Adobe, or XPS, the portable documentformat from Microsoft.

For those, we can flip over to Word 2010, and take a look at those options bygoing to Backstage view.We'll click the File tab and we'll go to Save As.Now when we click the drop-down button, and in this case we're using ourQ4Report, you'll notice all the different formats including PDF. That's portabledocument format and it's the Adobe format.There is a free viewer available to anybody at Adobe.com.It allows you to view a read-only version, almost like a picture version of the document.

The Microsoft version of that is XPS.So you've got that on the list as well.Let's just click that dropdown again and click Cancel and go back toBackstage view by clicking the File tab, and looking at another option, whichis to click Save & Send.Now here you have some options for both saving and sending at the same time,such as sending using email, and the formats that you can send via emailinclude PDF and XPS right there.You'll see a little bit of a blurb about what each format does and the advantages.

Same thing if we select under File Types here, Create PDF/XPS Document.Here you'll see that documents looked the same on most computers whenconverted to these formats. Fonts are preserved. All the formatting and imagesare also preserved. You can't easily change the content, and the free viewers are out there.So anyone can actually view these documents.They don't have to have Microsoft Word installed to look at your document.So let's click Create PDF/XPS.You can see PDF is the default here.If we click the dropdown, the other option is XPS.

So it's up to you which format you like to use.PDF is still a little more popular than XPS.You can also choose the location where you want to save it.I'm going to the Desktop and click Publish.So it just takes a moment to convert your document.You still have your document in Word format, so the .docx file is still there.But now you've got a copy of it in the new format, which is PDF.If you've got the Adobe Reader installed, which most people do by default,it automatically launches and displays the document.

So here we are in the Adobe Reader program, the free download from Adobe.com.As we scroll down, we see that really the formatting, the entire integrity of ourdocument has been maintained here as we scroll down through the three pages.So it's a great option for sharing your documents with others, especially whenyou don't want them to be able to make changes to those documents and you wanteveryone to be able to read the content regardless of whether they haveMicrosoft Word installed or not.

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Released

8/11/2010

In Migrating from Word 2003 to Word 2010, David Rivers walks through the switch to Word 2010 and the key differences users need to understand, including the Ribbon interface and changed file formats. This course provides in-depth information on working in a mixed Word environment and dealing with file compatibility issues, and also demonstrates how common Word tasks are performed in Word 2010 in comparison to Word 2003. Exercise files accompany the course.